


A Thousand Terrors

by SpoonerizeSwiftness (SplickedyHat)



Series: Oceanbound [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: And loads and loads of pale fluff., Angst with a Happy Ending, Brainwashing, Explicit Language, I mean it's Gamzee what do you expect., Insanity, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Psychic Violence, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:17:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/SpoonerizeSwiftness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Gamzee (YOUR NAME IS GAMZEE MAKARA) and you have been sane and mad and both at the same time.  (AND YOU HAVE BEEN WILD WITH MIRTHFUL MADNESS) And you have lived in the palace of your royal ancestors and you have lived on an island empty except for birds and ghosts, and the trolls from under the ocean with tails like fish.  And you have been alone.</p><p>And now you are not.</p><p>Your name is Gamzee and you are pretty chill with life.</p><p>[Follows Poor Unfor-tuna-te Shoals, will not make much sense without]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Terrors

**Author's Note:**

> Just thought it would be fair to warn y'all that this one is pretty odd, pretty stream-of-conscious-y, and is told exclusively from the inside of Gamzee's screwed up brain. Also, it is a companion piece, and without the original fic, it is likely to be even more confusing than it already was.

Your name is Gamzee and you are pretty motherfuckin’ chill with life.  You got no bloodhight, just hatchhight, and you live alone—never had a custodian like some trolls have, come and found and picked you up to keep from the Mother Grub’s brooding—whatever-the-fuck.  Cave.  Nah, motherfuckin’ cavern, right. 

You got nobody, nobody to tell you what’s good is good and bad is bad, but someone must’ve picked you up, because you’re all set up.  Got a hive and every so often they’ll leave you shit, just kinda drop it there at the door.  You stay up for them, but you never see who it is.  Just find the things they leave you.  Food, stuff to fix the shit you wreck after daymares.  And your drink.

You love the drink.  You found out a long time ago water ain’t the same thing—you got a miracle drink here, and it’s the water makes your head a bit better in mornings and takes the taste from your mouth and the drink makes the world all fuzzy-like, all dancing at the edges and spinning in the middles…

…shit, you spaced out again.

You stare out at the ocean and think.  You do that a lot.  Sometimes lose a whole motherfuckin’ night out here, just starin’ at the ocean.  Sometimes see things under the water, kinda dancing, sparkly shit, like huge fish. 

You figure it’s probably mertrolls and forget about it. Even though mertrolls are fake—a made up thing—and any self-respecting six-sweep-old knows that.  But you ain’t ever been a one for much self-respect and you never had no custodian to teach you that some things from books ain’t true. 

You know how to strife though, and when you hear something behind you in your hive give that little noise of glass getting’ its shatter goin’ you are up and around real quick, and you go a little for your clubs. 

You ain’t ever been one for much sneakin’—especially not now you’ve started towards second pupation, all kinda big arms and hands and feet and legs all over the place, and your face is gettin’ real friendly with the ground ‘cause you keep tripping over feet and legs and tyin’ yourself in knots.  Ain’t no such problem now.  Like all parts been coordinated by prickles in your vertebral column.  Like all parts been brought together asking  _who’s in my hive?_  Asking  _do they want to kill?_  

You ain’t ever killed another troll before.  Nor got no motherfucking inclination to up and start now, not unless you get your hand taken by the  _Aleire Saldheires_  themselves and their motherfucking mirth dictate you do a deed like that sort. 

Then things break, then there’s this noise kinda  _hisssss_ and then a sound you reckon is most likely  _phooomff_  and then your windows all get their glitter and shine and glow on. 

You stare at the way they’re all gold in the night for maybe thirty blood-pushes before it comes to mind your hive is on fire.

And then there’s big, cracking, breaky kinda pain on the back of your skull and the light from the fire goes out.

—

Your name is Gamzee Makara, and people keep bowin’ as you wander past, kinda lost for like the BILLIONTH MOTHERFUCKIN’TIME—

Shit. 

You don’t mean to do that, scream and get a wicked rage on, just sorta happens—your pan is all split into two bits now, a bit pretty much calm-like, all reasonable, all sensical, and a bit just wants…

…you try to not think on what the other bit wants, just troop back to your room and set down and bandage up what hurts you have tonight.

It’s been a perigee since they burned your hive and brought you here.  You have found your bloodhight.  Found it real motherfucking good, found it so good as even a fool like can get your understand on about it.  You have found your  _tadaidh_ , and he shares your sign and your horns and he looks on you all judgmental, and cuffs you so’s your bones are like to break, and screams so’s your ears are like to break too.  But he says you may someday have a touch of use.  He’ll fix you up, he says.  He’ll make you an heir.

Grand Motherfucking Highblood ain’t a man to think on even  _thinking_  on turning down.  You are weak in his presence, you are as three sweeps old again and he has a way of motherfuckin’  _terror_  such as you have not felt, not  _ever_.  Your bones are rattled with it in his gaze.  Your pusher falters to think of him near.  You can’t contemplate the word ‘no’ in answer to a single request of his making.

So you fight.  You fight a motherfucking  _shit-load_.  You fight brothers and sisters who bleed in colors not quite so violet as yours, never quite so bright as yours.  You stove noses, break teeth, crush bonespars through skin and leave your challengers broken-up and small next to you like little toys.  You are brought brothers and sisters who have blood colored like a sunrise and like the forests.  You are given heavy blows and harsh words when you call them brothers and sisters until you cringe all unmeaning-like, until you don’t dare think to call them that again even in thought.  You look at them and find your eyes prickle, your horns ache, your think-pan gets its throb on something wicked and they just fall like shadows in light, fall and curl and make grub-sounds.  Bleed from noses, bite through tongues and lips, cry like you’re doing them more torment with your eyes than a million doctorturers with their tools, piss themselves in fear and cry for a comfort.

They cry to motherfucking  _die_  rather than be near you again and your bile is uneasy inside you. 

You do not blame them for fearing.  You scare your own self sometimes.  Turn a little and catch your own motherfuckin’ face (all painted pretty now, better than you ever could alone in your hive) and you jump and draw club and then up and feel the fool all again. 

But you are not so far to blame, you think, not this time.  You see yourself and you are seeing a troll almost grown, hair gettin’ long to his shoulders and eyes all sorts of wicked bright in his blood-hue.  And he ain’t got a thousand terrors to his name yet like his old man, but  _demnigh sé_ he is getting close and motherfucking closer all times. Wilder and longer-horned, broader and stronger, and  _bigger._

And motherfuck but you are getting  _bigger_.  They feed you, and your corpse takes to it like it’s been waitin’ for it for a fucking  _eternity._ You are growin’ so fast your bones give you reason to groan at night, like you can feel ‘em stretching you out and _MOTHERFUCK IT HURTS_. They give you food, drink, but not  _your_  drink, and you are made of unease and prickling with loss of your motherfucking soft world and its colors all soothing to your pounding head and stretching bones.

Without the drink to make all into softness, you hear voices in your thinkpan.  You hear voices and screams, get your concentrate on and listen hard and your old man’s voice is in and around and throughout you and you cannot  _stand_ his touch so deep inside.  It gets stronger and you bring yourself to uneasy wakefulness arms-deep in the corpse of a troll sent only to wake you.  You dream of screaming and wake and find you are not dreaming and drop broken bodies and turn and flee them. 

And every time you lose control for want of soft edges your  _tadaidh_  gives you looks like pride and screams a little less to break your auriculars, and you are given nicer things, better food.  Once after you go to slaughter he reaches and you go still, flinch for a blow.  But he just knocks at your back with broad palm.  You are all motherfucking shock and you stay such when he goes, leaves you gaping and covered in blue blood, alone.  You are so full of shock because you have felt touch and mother _fuck_  it feels good.  Feels more than good.  Ain’t been touched but to hurt, not for a long time and you are starved for something not food and cold not for want of clothes.

But your pan is splitting in two.  And you kill and they fear you and you are sick, deep and infected with something wicked and motherfucking  _un-right._

So you go.

—

Your name is Gamzee, and this island is the promised land.                        

You came here half-mad and now you are at peace again.  You came here alone and now you have made a precious friend and she is motherfucking sweet and got a tail like a fish.  And she brings you drink.

She comes when you are half-dead.  You came here and wrecked here, boat drifting away to sink, you tore yourself to blood and bones on the wood around you, but you can’t bring destruction to another troll without your knowing and control if there ain’t no other trolls around.  Your broken brain batters you around, tears you up and then it kinda goes silent and you are left.

You lie there for a few days and nights, all together.  You are in shade; you close your eyes and sleep through the days and you lie there at night and don’t move but to aerate thoracic cavity now and again and feel blood-pusher stutter soft inside you.  You are alone and have broken, and you are up and determined that you can die here and that ain’t even a thing.

And at moonrise, quantity of days later you cannot know a count for, there’s this voice, little squeaking sound.  You turn your head—bones creak like the masts at night, you are half-healed already, all sore of disuse and stiff as a motherfuck.  There’s a little face come out of the water.  Girl, by the lips and the eyelashes.  Think-pan brings to bear the memory of how a girl can snap and crumble, different, other.  You push it off.  You are too weak for that half to be strong. 

Girl’s got little dark freckle-dots on flesh and big bright eyes like the color of sunrise and miracles, and she looks at you kind of curious and waits like she thinks you’ll try moving your heavy corpse and aggress.

You do not aggress.  You are not of a mind to move, not even for a little miracle-girl, and you just close eye and turn back up—groan, your neck making noises like festival firecrackers, wasted flesh straining and twanging. 

The first thing your miracle girl says to you is “…are you alright?”

The second thing she says you don’t hear, because you go back to that heavy sleep you been sleeping of late, and you lose hold of ears and eyes.

You wake up and you are drinking.

Tastes like water straight from sea, and the taste is strange but you are drinking and it is not coming back up and you are a little stronger for it.  You drunk seawater before, when the fresh water wouldn’t come in your hive.  Never told a soul about it, any more than you’d tell about little straggling fins riding ridge and crest of your auricular helix, hidden under your hair.  Or trace of scars on your sides, like a fish’s gill meant to be there, what somehow never managed to be.  You are half in the water anyway, you think, dizzy, and you swallow and swallow and love water like you ain’t ever loved it before. 

You choke a little on breath, move slow, testing all faculties because you are not of confidence that you are not still broken.  Limbs heavy like you are lifting the Big Top itself.  Skull pounding.  Horns ache, and you remember swinging your head in a scream, rage-eaten and foaming, and cracking them into wood.  Eyes itching-painful.  Mouth all thick and heavy.  You try your vocals and you find nothing—rough croaks, squawks like the seabirds that you share this island with. 

You open eye and look up, and it’s your miracle-girl.  She’s pulled up, full on the wood with you, and she is not so young and small as she looked.  She is strong of arm and holds you easy, and she smiles with teeth could rip your throat out in a blink.  You are comforted by the danger of her, the strength and strife she could bring, and you close up your vision again and you let her trickle water into you until you are sat up and breathing.

The first thing you say to your miracle girl is “… _motherfuck, defiúr_ , you been brought here by miracles.”

And the second thing she says to you is not words but a laugh, and she calls herself “Feferi” and coaxes words out of you, bit by bit.  Name, how long you been here—you don’t rightly know, but you give it a try for her—you tell her you don’t know how to fish, don’t know how to take care of yourself out here and she teaches you.  And she brings you things from the land and you give your best to tell her all of everything you remember, as little as you remember of life as it went when you had any form of normal inside.  She helps.  To her you are not  _Makara_  and you are lord of not a single terror.  She brings you drinks of unfamiliar tastes and familiar warm softness and you haul yourself up and you motherfucking  _survive._

—

Your name is Gamzee Makara, and you _have to tear something INTO A THOUSAND MOTHERFUCKING PIECES you have to paint EVERY SINGLE COLOR on EVERY MOTHERFUCKING WALL_ and you

Your name is Gamzee and you are fighting yourself and you are motherfucking  _losing_ and you are tearing yourself to pieces without sense and without reason and you are in pain both inside and out.  Your sister has gone, gone and if she come back again you don’t know how to begin to motherfucking keep yourself from

If she comes back again IF SHE EVEN THINKS OF MOTHERFUCKING SHOWING HER FACE you will TEAR HER PRETTY PURPLE EYES OUT, you will  _HANG HER MOTHERFUCKING SCALES FROM YOUR MOTHERFUCKING WALLS_ , you will make a fucking CASTLE of this wreck because you are deserving of that LITTLE AMOUNT OF MOTHERFUCKING REVERENCE

You tied yourself back with the last scraps of thought, tied yourself so’s you can’t untie again.  Your bones wrench against the ropes, knees hit wood so hard you feel skin tear.  You are an ugly mess of hate and rage and you fling over on your side, arms up behind you and heave emptiness onto the deck with your blood and your motherfucking tears the color of

Highblood HIGHBLOOD  **HIGHBLOOD _HIGHBLOOD_**  you should be motherfucking RULING you should be motherfucking SLAUGHTERING and you throw out EVERY MOTHERFUCKING  **SCRAP**  OF POWER with a howl of rage.  Hope you send some MOTHERFUCKING LOWBLOOD to night terrors, feel a hundred distant minds miles away on land shift and shudder, uneasy at the touch of your powers

And you fall back, worn to your bones, fall back and curl up, tears falling hot on your knees. 

And you hear.

“… _Gamzee?_ ”

It is a voice unknown to you, and you feel throat-tearing, teeth-snapping rage boil up—choke it down, dig claws to hand-meat until you are bleeding down your wrists.  But something boils out of you, half laugh, half-memory, the raised hands of the congregation and the laughter and the sounds of screams and rejoicing MOTHERFUCKING REJOICING

_honk_

Feel a jolt of presence, mind nearby.  A mind to drive to terror and SLOW MOTHERFUCKING DEATH for intruding, but you motherfucking claw at it and it won’t  _let you in_ , it is distant and strange, unlike anything you have seen before.

“Gamzee?”

honk

“Where are you?”  Can see a shape now, dim against the moonlight-ocean-light come closer  **come closer**  COME CLOSER COME HERE LET’S SEE WHAT BLOOD YOU ARE what color confounds power like this,  _come closer_ …!  “…we brought wine, why don’t you come out here…”

You are almost amused,  _YOU ALMOST FIND MOTHERFUCKING MIRTH AT THAT_  but you are battered and worn and you cannot find the power to laugh.  You try to tell this intruder “ _too late”_ , try to tell him “ _I have no motherfucking want nor need of wine_ I HAVE NO NEED,” but you get out nothing but the first two words before your squawk-blister knots and you are too weak to make for any action but breathing.

Flash of metal.  There are two, and you see a pair of curves and know the horns of your sister, too tall to be swimming.  She is standing, and she is with another, some motherfucker with a blade and you can’t reconcile your mind to a thought,  _do it do it motherfucker get it over with just slit me open_ or  _cut me free we’ll see what colors you have inside, CUT ME FREE I’ll show you how alive motherfucking_ FEAR  _can make you—_

Spark of fire, flare of light, and you see a face, spikes of black hair, stern eyes, drawn weapon and you are so

MOTHERFUCKING

 **Gone**.

You come to, inches from him, near in his face with cold steel the breadth of hand from your throat.  And you are screaming and tearing and your throat is so raw and you are sobbing like a wriggler with the need to paint in his blood, whatever color, ANY MOTHERFUCKING COLOR.  You have such a  _need_  to let out the violence inside you on another, you are struggling and screaming and you can hear your old man’s voice in your head, the screams, the laughter, the sobbing,  _kill him_ kill him KILL HIM  **KILL HIM** ** _MOTHERFUCKING KILL HIM_**

You lose yourself—flicker back in and out like lightning, flashes of your little sister’s face, eyes all wide and terrible with horror and the stranger’s snarly face and almost-familiar black coat, like something out of a book you _FUCK FUCK FUCK MOTHERFUCK PLEASE it is so loud and I am so tired_ IT IS SO MOTHERFUCKING LOUD and I am IN SUCH MOTHERFUCKING NEED

and then you slam into a moment of calm so hard it hurts.  Slump back again, all stagger and weakness, throat bared as your head wobbles side to side and your eyes try to hold their faces.  You don’t want this stranger to kill you without ever knowing you were once something other, you think, hazy.  You have to tell him you were a troll once, you could smile and you could think clear and you  _weren’t just a motherfucking murderer_.

You can’t even get your guess on how much blather pours out your mouth, straight from your thoughts.  How much of you is just sobbing for your pain and your sickness and your fear.  How much is a roar for the motherfucking rage that is pouring out your skin, out every broken gash and throbbing patch of pain.

But he is looking at you without fear and you are looking at him and you are so.  Motherfucking.   _Weak._ And you can’t understand why someone would  _do_ this, why they would take you, when you never touched a troll in your life with intent to hurt, not ever before.  Why they would put this thought of murder so strong inside you you cannot think of remembering yourself, why does it have to be  _you_ , why are you the murderer, why are you

And then the stranger steps forward and puts his light down on the wood and weight is on your head and warmth through your hair.

You cannot even contemplate the actuality of yourself at this moment.  You cannot comprehend how things are being, how you are, what this is, why there is a hand on your head, just that it is warm and heavy and for a second you are more in your own body than you have been in a whole motherfucking  _sweep_. He takes his hand away, crosses arms over small, sturdy thorax, locks your eyes and makes this  _noise_ , this noise like he has reached into the deepest motherfucking fragments of your soul and touched it like he touched you when he laid hands on your hair.  “ _Shooooosh”_

You struggle, wanting and hating, fighting yourself more than ever.  The half of you wants to do things unbearable to him—make him  _scream—_ tries to lash out for him, pull him close and claw him, but you cannot, you  _are not motherfucking able_  to hurt this tiny, solid, warm piece of light and your head is making to split in two with the pain of it.  You cannot get to a single gasp of air; it is pulling away from you and leaving you behind to choke for it, claw at yourself, rake hands through hair, tearing skin—

He takes your hand from yourself and his skin is so warm,  _so motherfucking warm_  when he touches where you clawed.  He brushes your hair out of your eyes, so gentle you have never felt the like, and gives you this look like he knows.  He  _knows._

“ _Shooooshooshoosh,_ ” he murmurs, and you are finally,  _finally_ warm.

—

Your name is Gamzee Makara and  _THEY WILL NOT SEND YOU BACK._   You see yourself, terrible clear, the way you’ll be if he takes you in again, if he keeps cracking open your skull and curling up inside it.  You see yourself overcome with harshwhimsy, with hellmirth and frenzy and you see these people who’ve taken care and smiled at you falling down like shadows in front of light—the  _screaming crying begging **dying**_  and you want NO MOTHERFUCKING PART OF HIS CIRCUS you will motherfucking  _make your own._  

You press hard enough they’re buckling, till they know what you’re capable of, till they know how it’ll be if they let him have you back.  Then you let it go.  All your hurts throb again; Feferi’s miracle-troll with the red blue candy-eyes is on the ground, blood dripping down his face.  Girl with the cat-ear horns looks about to jump straight up and out of her seat.  Sister with the curled horns has her eyes shut, and for a minute you can’t see not a single hint of breath and you fear.  Then you see her eyes blink open, all full of voodoos and shadows what you didn’t ever put there. Your sweet new brother with the big amazing horns and wavery brave eyes looks half out of himself and you think you’ve gone too far—

Karkat hits you.

You can’t find it to be upset by that because motherfuck, you pushed too hard.  You were in that bad spot you go sometimes, all twisted up tight between gettin’ on your wicked fury and screamin’ out some kind of fear, and you are motherfucking sorry about that, sorrier than you ever been about almost anything. 

You raise your hands, so’s maybe he’ll understand what you ain’t capable of forcin’ out of your stupid mouth,  _won’t touch you sorry not gonna fight._ But he doesn’t hit you again, he just winds up and breathes in and he gives voice.  Wicked most holy motherfucking  _shit_  does he give voice.  You are all mightily scolded like you didn’t even know was possible.  Brother’s got just the saltiest manners of speaking you ever known. You never heard such words as he uses sometimes. 

And then someone says ‘Makara’.

You don’t stare, glare, don’t back away from the name like you want to, but you look up and the sister with the curled horns and the voodoos lingering in her eyes is looking at you.  You see something in her eyes that recognizes your power—your  _tadaidh’_ s power—in you, and all manner of churning unease hits you in the guts.  She’s been and had something cruel done to her, and by your blood’s hands. 

You do not hold her eyes. 

You see on your new moirail’s face this is a moment of making and breaking and you see no way forward that doesn’t end in a break.  Karkat’s hand squeezes at your wrist.  You reach a hair further forward to him out of others’ sight and press knuckles to his chest, all the touch you got to give without moving.  You wait—

And then the sister with the red glass over her eyes laughs and they begin to talk and the moment is gone and  _you are not broken._

You can’t get that understanding beaten into your thinkpan, so you just kind of smile a little and try to help, and they let you in and  _you have motherfucking friends_.  You are bound to die of this, more than any other thing ever been done to you, you are bound to die of warm and happy and the look on your moirail’s face when they let you into their circle, all for the trust of him. 

They got your old man to do with same as you do, and you hear your running has been a world of trouble to them.  You got things atonal to deal out here.

You’re going to help.

—

Your name is Gamzee Makara and you have never been this strong.

You are riding forces you ain’t got a single notion of understanding for, things coming off your little sister like a tide.  It’s the very first time you turn on the fear on purpose, let chucklevoodoos and hellmirth out like carving yourself open, pour crazy out like blood and terror peeking through like bones.  You whisper to the blues and violets as you pass and you say to them all you’re thinking of doing to them and theirs, and they  _bow._

All except your old man. 

You try to reach out to his mind while you talk, but it is heavy and it is dark and cold and it is  _aged_ , and you forgot till now how he took you in his presence, knees weak, pusher gettin’ its beat on so fast, so hard it’s like to cut your air.  You have to help your little sister but  _demnigh sé_ , you are motherfucking  _crushed_ , winded, and you have to stagger back.

It all comes down to his humors, when it comes to the finalities of it.  He makes you to be the bargaining chip, gracing them with you.  Maybe figuring you’ll break like you did in his castle, that you’ll take care of some of them for him.  Fuck him.  You got a moirail and your  _tadaidh_  is going to regret all he taught you for that sweep you were under his claw.

He finishes with Feferi—turns to you, and you bare tooth at him.  Then you’re staggering.  He hits you so hard you think he’s drawn on you for a beat, before you realize that wasn’t even a  _thing_.  Wasn’t even with hand or club, just off-hand, casual, sudden  _smack_  of fear so strong and sudden it hurts like horns scraping metal.  Just to let you know, just to say  _still stronger than you._

You are humiliated and hateful with shame as he speaks to you, just a few words—“ _if you aren’t the one comes to kill me in the end I’ll HUNT THESE LOWBLOODED MOTHERFUCKERS DOWN AND POUR HOT GOLD IN THEIR SOCKETS TILL THEIR SKULLS GILD,_ **do we make accord**?”  And you snarl it back at him, hateful as you can, “ _We make accord, tadaidh”._ Upright challenge all up and thick in the air. He just turns away from you like you give him no further mirth and leaves you there in the road, shaky in the knees and think-pan so full of motherfucking  _fury_  on him it aches to give it thought.

You sit there in the road until your moirail comes for you, and for all you’ve lost your church, your bloodhight, your way, he lets you fall down and hold him tight right there on the street.  And you have found the only motherfucking miracle you need.

—

(Your name is Gamzee Makara, and you are way more than motherfucking chill with your miraculous, crazy life.)


End file.
